Western Weddings
Music played at Western weddings includes a processional song for walking down the aisle (ex: wedding march) and reception dance music includes:
- Various works for trumpet and organ, arguably the most famous of which include the Prince of Denmark's March by Jeremiah Clarke as a processional, the "Trumpet Tune" by Henry Purcell and the "Trumpet Voluntary" by John Stanley as recessionals.
- Selections by George Frideric Handel, perhaps most notably the "Air" from his Water Music as processional and the "Alla Hornpipe" as recessional.
- The "Bridal Chorus" from Lohengrin by Richard Wagner, often used as the processional and commonly known as "Here Comes the Bride". Richard Wagner is said to have been anti-Semitic, and as a result, the Bridal Chorus is often not used at Jewish weddings.
- Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D is an alternative processional.
- The "Wedding March" from Felix Mendelssohn's incidental music for the Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, used as a recessional.
- The "Toccata" from Charles-Marie Widor's Symphony for Organ No. 5, used as a recessional.
- Segments of the Ode to Joy, the fourth movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Read more about this topic: List Of Wedding Ceremony Participants, Wedding Music
Famous quotes containing the word western:
“Christianity as an organized religion has not always had a harmonious relationship with the family. Unlike Judaism, it kept almost no rituals that took place in private homes. The esteem that monasticism and priestly celibacy enjoyed implied a denigration of marriage and parenthood.”
—Beatrice Gottlieb, U.S. historian. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, ch. 12, Oxford University Press (1993)